A standard face driver has a body in which a compression spring is directly or indirectly braced against a centering rod having a centering point, and having a driver disk that surrounds the centering rod and serves for contacting the workpiece. Such a face drivers is used in cooperation with a tailstock to hold workpieces at their end faces when it is not possible to hold them on their side or peripheral surfaces, for example because that is where machining is to be done. As a result of the holding at the end faces, torque must be transmitted via the end faces of the workpiece, and in addition forces that act during axial and radial machining must not be allowed to interfere with the holding and the position of the workpiece.
A face driver of the above-described type is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,647,841 in which a spacer disk on the one hand and a swash plate on the other hand are provided between the body and the workpiece, the spacer disk and the swash plate each being supported by steel rollers that are aligned orthogonally with respect to one another.
In addition, a face driver from Basile GmbH is known from prior public use where a compensating system is used that, with the aid of wedge levers, allows driving by four drive pins. The wedge lever body is held in the correct position by two wedge lever pins that are supported by two wedge lever supports. Two floating plates are situated on the wedge lever body, and are held in position on the wedge lever body by two elastic elements. The four driving pins are guided by the driving pin head. The centering point is independent from the driving pin, and is tensioned by a disk spring assembly. For left/right rotation there is an option to exchange the driving pins.